The English constitution / by Walter Bagehot ; with an introduction by the Earl of Balfour.

  • Walter Bagehot
Date:
[1945]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The English constitution / by Walter Bagehot ; with an introduction by the Earl of Balfour. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    part, at least when in great and critical action, is decidedly simple and rather modem. We have made, or rather stumbled on, a constitution which— though full of every species of incidental defect, though of the worst workmanship in all out-of-the- way matters of any constitution in the world—yet has two capital merits: it contains a simple efficient part which, on occasion, and when wanted, can work more simply and easily, and better, than any instrument of government that has yet been tried; and it contains likewise historical, complex, august, ' theatrical parts, which it has inherited from a long rpast—which take the multitude—^which guide by an insensible but an omnipotent influence the [ •. associations of its subjects. Its essence is strong with ' the strength of modem simplicity; its exterior is ; august with the Gothic grandeur of a more imposing I age. Its simple essence may, mutatis mutandis, be transplanted to many very various countries, but its august outside—what most men think it is—is narrowly confined to nations with an analogous history and similar political materials. The efficient secret of the English Constitution r may be described as the close union, the nearly I' complete fusion, of the executive and legislative ;i powers. No doubt by the traditional theory, as it |r exists in all the books, the goodness of our constitu- r tion consists in the entire separation of the legis- i lative and executive authorities, but in truth its ir merit consists in their singular approximation. The !► connecting link is the cabinet. By that new word we If mean a committee of the legislative body selected if' to be the executive body. The legislature has many ;i committees, but this is the greatest. It chooses for ir this, its main committee, the men in whom it has ir.most confidence. It does not, it is true, choose them indirectly; but it is nearly omnipotent in choosing
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